This is the kind of thing I am referring to when talking about the situation at her house.
The oldest boy that is still living at home - there is an even older one who is currently in the Navy - was asked last night to build a fire in the fireplace.

She is attempting to save money on electric and use the fireplace for heat versus turning the electric heating on.  The boy complains about how cold it is upstairs.  I will say here that I keep my heat on at a very minimum range during the winter at night, at night only.  Just enough to keep it from getting too cold in the house, not enough to have my electric use sky rocket.  And no, no-one is allowed to use a space heater and if someone were without my knowledge, it would be immediately known to me that someone is doing something by simply looking at the daily electric usage.

The boy - 17 years old - starts complaining that there isn't any firewood.  Well, I was just there, there are over 3 cords of wood outside, already cut, ready to be used.  Some of it is well seasoned, very easy to start a fire with.  He then complains that there is no kindling - again, house surrounded by trees, some of them pines dropping cones and needles, plenty of kindling close to the house.  He didn't want to go outside and get the wood or the kindling.  She asks him again.  He flatly refuses and walks upstairs to his room.

That is actually tame to some of the other stuff, but to give an idea of what kind of atmosphere a man that doesn't care about his own kids creates after years of both neglect and abuse.  Abuse in the form of constant yelling and cussing at the kids.  He still doesn't care after the divorce and living away from all of it to the tune that he intentionally rented a small apartment so they couldn't come over for extended visits and so that none of them could move in with him.  One of them called him the other day declaring he wanted to move in.  The lady was telling him he couldn't go with 2 girls alone on a date.  He's only 15 years old, this is pretty easy to figure out.  He gets mad at her but dad says no, you aren't moving in with me.

Whatever.  This kind of thing apparently happens just about every day there.  I wouldn't know, I only saw minor outbursts when I was there but I am not sure why they weren't acting out in my presence. I'm not their daddy, I have no parental control over them so I am not sure.  She did tell me yesterday that I have "quite the following" in her kids, but that doesn't include all of them.

Well, whatever. It's Thursday, I'm trying to figure out what I am going to do with this coming weekend.  The temps are supposed to go back down again.  It's pretty crazy to have to be running the AC in the daytime considering it's near the middle of November.  That is not normal weather, even for here.  It shouldn't be this warm this late in the year.

I had half thoughts of going up north, but I don't really feel like using the fuel money.  I am cutting some corners at this point in trying to gather enough money to buy airfare.  That has to be done upfront before anything else.  It will stifle any plans to do any Black Friday shopping, but I wasn't really planning on doing that this year anyway.  Unless there is something I see that is too good a deal to pass up, though.  You never know.  I don't need another laptop but I wouldn't mind snagging an MP3 player if the price were right for a good one.  I have never owned one but always wanted one.

I will, in reality, probably just stay home and get some things done outside.  Not a lot left to do, but there is some de-weeding and grass pulling that needs to occur.  The hummingbird is cranking on  me to refill the container, there should be enough for him to last through today though. That bird chirps at me whenever it is getting low, I'm not imagining it, I have encountered that thing doing it too many times now.  It will buzz my head and fly around me and if I am sitting outside it will come up to a tree near me and just sit there.  Amazing, really!

Enough.

G'day.

ben